We Have Found the Rosetta Stone of DNA Expression

As Phillips said, “we have already developed a generic tool, and researchers can use it for almost all microorganisms.”

In fact, “misprints” also appear in genomes, and we can observe how it influence the functioning of cells. Take language as example, if we replace the capital “k” in the word “walk” with the capital “x”, we will get a new word “walx”, which has no meanings and could not be expressed. That’s how unexpressed traits work. But if we replace the capital “w” in the word “walk” with the capital “t”, we will get a new word “talk”, which has meanings. And in this case, the situation becomes much more complex. 

Generally speaking, Rob Phillips Physical Biology Laboratory’s tool works in the similar way as the above examples. It figures out relationships between traits and genomes through replacements.

During the research, Phillips and his colleagues first experimented on the 20 genes of E. coli whose functions have already been found out. And they succeed in proving that their method works. After that, they go on experimenting on the other 80 genes whose functions are not clear yet.

At present, this method only applies to bacterial cells, while Phillips believes that it could be upgraded, and finally applies to eukaryotic cells (like human’s) in the future.

As Phillips said, “This is a 10-year long research that has won the ‘NIH Pioneer Award’. It needs sustained effort, sustained money and patience. The result will not come out in a short time.”